Your smartphone photos can look way better. If you're willing to put in a little extra work, use third-party apps, and spend a bit of time editing, it's possible to take photos that — under the right circumstances — can rival those from dedicated digital cameras. This isn't just wishful thinking; modern smartphone sensors have become so capable that the main bottleneck is often the software processing baked into your phone's default camera app.
Many people post smartphone photos online and wonder why they don't look as polished as those from professional photographers. The answer isn't a better camera — it's understanding how to bypass the default processing and take control of the image-making process. Over the last few years, smartphone camera sensors have gotten bigger, with better light-gathering capabilities and higher resolutions. But despite these hardware improvements, the straight-out-of-camera quality through default camera apps hasn't improved much, if at all. In some respects, smartphone photos have actually gotten worse — aesthetically, at least.
Why Smartphone Photos Look "Muddy"
The reason driving this is what people generally use their smartphone cameras for. Smartphone cameras are mostly optimized for information transfer — sending photos of menus, signs, faces, and objects that are clear and easy to see. This means phones will usually pull down highlights and pull up shadows, creating a flatter image that makes it easier to see more information in the frame. But showing more information does not automatically make a photo better. In fact, much of our perception of aesthetics in a photo has to do with its ability to present depth. A photo with too much information in the shadows and highlights will appear washed out.
Phones also introduce artifacts like over-sharpening and noise reduction to compensate for their small sensors, which further contributes to the "muddy" smartphone camera look you're used to seeing by now. This is less necessary now, but many smartphones still do it. The result is that even though the sensor is capable of capturing beautiful, detailed images, the default processing often destroys that potential by flattening the dynamic range and applying aggressive noise reduction that removes fine texture.
But that doesn't mean phone cameras are bad. The sensors in modern smartphones have actually gotten so good that many of them can rival dedicated point-and-shoot options on the market today. Knowing how to utilize those sensors is the part most people don't know how to do, and it really comes down to utilizing some third-party camera and editing apps.
The Apps: From Film Emulation to Natural Modes
There are plenty of apps available today that will give you an instantly "aesthetic" photo. Apps like Dazzcam and Hujicam try to emulate film aesthetics like light leaks and polaroid borders, and honestly, if that's what you're looking for, they do a fantastic job. There are also apps like Moment Pro Camera II and Halide that offer "Natural" and "Process Zero" modes, which apply far lighter processing than the default camera offers.
These options are great if you want your pictures to look better instantly without needing to do any additional editing. They strip away the heavy-handed noise reduction, over-sharpening, and tone mapping that plague default camera output. The result is a more organic, film-like image that preserves the natural contrast and color of the scene. If you're on Android, apps like VWFNDR and Zerocam offer similar philosophies, focusing on simplicity and natural rendering.
Shooting RAW: The Key to Maximum Quality
If you want the best possible photo, you'll need to shoot RAW or DNG. RAW files are a bundle of practically all the information your camera collects, with extremely minimal processing. In most cases, RAW photos won't necessarily look better than photos straight from the default camera app right away, but that's because the default camera app makes a lot of creative decisions for you. If you want the highest-quality photo, it's best to make these creative decisions yourself.
There are tons of apps available that let you shoot RAW, but the apps I use frequently and that I recommend to other people are Moment Pro Camera II and Halide on iOS, and VWFNDR and Zerocam on Android. These apps give you manual control over exposure, focus, and shutter speed, and they allow you to save uncompressed RAW files that retain all the data captured by the sensor. You can think of RAW as a digital negative — it's not yet a finished print, but it contains everything you need to create one.
I wouldn't recommend shooting RAW on every photo you take on your phone. Your phone camera is, after all, optimized for what you are probably taking photos of every day. Snapping a quick photo of a whiteboard or a receipt doesn't require the artistic latitude of RAW. Instead, I generally shoot RAW when I see a nice landscape or city scene that I want to share, or if I'm trying to take a portrait of someone and don't want all the automatic computational phone processing to apply. Really, I shoot RAW when I'm trying to take a photo for artistic purposes, not for informational purposes.
Tips for Shooting RAW on Your Phone
When you're shooting, you'll want to tap on your subject in the viewfinder to get the best possible exposure for it. If the rest of the image is a little bright, or a little dark, don't worry too much. RAW photos retain a lot of information, so you can recover details in post-processing that would be lost with JPEG. I should note, though, that under extremely dark circumstances, RAW on smartphones won't always be the best option. Physics is still physics, and sometimes it's better to use the computational photography capabilities your phone offers, which mostly shine in low-light environments by stacking multiple frames to reduce noise.
You'll notice that when you shoot in RAW, the apps will force you to stick to the native focal lengths your phone offers. That's because RAW images are information straight off the sensor, and cropping applies processing. Photos from the main sensor will often be the best quality, since it usually has the biggest sensor on your phone, so I recommend shooting with it if you can. I do often shoot with the telephoto lens while traveling though, because sometimes you want a little more reach or a little more compression, and you can usually get good photos from that lens as well.
Understanding exposure is also crucial. When shooting RAW, you might be tempted to underexpose to preserve highlights, since RAW files have more headroom in the shadows. But be careful — pushing shadows too far in post can reintroduce noise. The best approach is to expose for the highlights, as is standard practice in traditional photography, and then lift shadows in editing if needed.
Editing: Transforming RAW into a Stunning Photo
After you take your photos, you're going to need to edit them. Most phones won't show RAW images in the camera gallery, so in order to get them into an editing app, it's best to use the share sheet and share directly to your editing app of choice. I suggest Snapseed, since it's totally free and recently got a wonderful visual overhaul. If you're an Adobe subscriber, Lightroom Mobile is also great, especially if you're already used to Lightroom's tools on your computer.
RAW photos don't usually look great right away, and the magic of RAW is just how much you can tweak the files. Once I have the photo imported, I usually hit the auto button, just to see what the general boundaries are for the image. Auto mode tries to make everything a mid-tone, meaning it will pull down the highlights and pull up the shadows. This will already look better than straight-out-of-camera from your phone's default camera app, because it isn't applying noise reduction or sharpening, just highlight, shadow, contrast, and saturation tweaks, but it usually still needs more, or different, adjustments.
Once I see what auto mode wants to do, I'll either edit from there, or hit the back button and edit myself. A good photo has a natural amount of contrast, with relatively deep shadows and bright highlights. You usually don't want to go too hard on either of these things, and having a little bit of detail in both of these is usually preferred. But honestly, this is subjective. Occasionally, it's preferable to crush the highlights and shadows completely, if you're going for an ultra high-contrast look.
Color Adjustments
For color, RAW images are usually flatter than most people find pleasing, and you can fix this with either the saturation or vibrance sliders. I generally prefer vibrance. Saturation will increase the saturation of all colors in the image linearly, where vibrance is weighted, increasing saturation of flatter colors more than already-saturated colors. You can overdo this pretty easily, so I recommend having a light touch when it comes to saturation. You can also use white balance to color your image, and many people find a warmer white balance more pleasing, especially when taking photos outside.
Another color tool I love to use is the color mix, or selective editing tool. This allows you to tap on a portion of the image and change some of its values. In Snapseed, you can change the brightness, contrast, saturation, and structure. If you're in Lightroom mobile, you'll have access to selective hue shifts, which I use all the time. This allows you to shift a yellow tone towards more orange or green, or shift a blue tone more cyan or purple. This is incredibly powerful for fine-tuning the mood of your photo without affecting the entire image.
Perspective and Geometry
Most editing apps also include geometry or perspective tools. These tools allow you to adjust distortion, aspect, scale, and offset. If you don't know what that means, try hitting the auto button in the geometry or perspective setting. You might be surprised how distorted your phone captured a scene compared to what it looks like in reality, but this is image-dependent. If you want to straighten lines in your photo, some editing apps offer a guided tool that allows you to manually add guidance lines to tell the program what lines should be straight in the image.
The tools you'll want to use are going to depend heavily on what you want the image to convey. For example, when I'm doing architectural photography, I rely a lot more heavily on the perspective tools, because the aesthetic of the image is heavily dictated by its geometry. If I'm photographing a landscape, I'm more focused on tone and color. Not every scene needs to be tweaked with every tool, and how you edit comes down to personal taste. That taste can also take a while to develop, so study the photos you like and try to figure out how they were edited. With practice, you'll develop an intuition for what adjustments are needed.
The Finishing Touch: Borders and Mattes
When you're done with your edits, many editing apps like Snapseed and Lightroom Mobile also come with a handy tool to put a matte (or border) around your image. I think that photos look better with a white border, as it isolates the image for your eyes. You obviously don't have to use this tool, but I really like it. Have some whimsy! A border can also make your photos look more intentional when shared on social media, and it adds a gallery-like feel to your work.
This process is a lot more work than just opening your camera app and snapping, but the results are worth it. I am continuously blown away by the quality of images I'm able to get off smartphones, and just how close they can be to a dedicated camera. In one recent comparison, a modern flagship smartphone was able to produce images nearly indistinguishable from a high-end rangefinder camera, thanks to careful RAW capture and editing. That kind of result is achievable for anyone with a phone, the right apps, and a willingness to learn.
The gap between smartphone and dedicated camera photography has narrowed dramatically, but only if you take advantage of the tools and techniques available. By shooting RAW, using third-party apps that prioritize natural rendering, and investing time in editing, you can transform your everyday snapshots into stunning, gallery-worthy images. Whether you're capturing a landscape, a portrait, or a city street, the power to create professional-looking photos is already sitting in your pocket.
Source:The Verge News